Sunday, February 17, 2008

US subprime crisis costs global 7.7 trillion dollars

The meltdown in the US subprime real-estate market has led to a global loss of 7.7 trillion dollars in stock-market value [over the last 4+ months], a report by Bank of America showed Thursday.

The crisis, which has spread beyond US shores to banks and other sectors worldwide, is "one of the most vicious in financial history," according to Bank of America chief market strategist Joseph Quinlan.

Quinlan said in the report that the losses are worse than any in the past few decades, including Wall Street's Black Monday of 1987, the 1999 Brazilian real currency crisis and the collapse of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998.

"The current financial crisis is one for the record books and one, more ominously, not over yet."